(Kitco News) – After testing resistance at $2,700 at the start of the week, gold is once again on the back foot as stubborn inflation takes its toll on expectations surrounding the Federal Reserve’s easing cycle.
The precious metal received a much-needed boost earlier this week as investors reacted to news that China’s central bank resumed buying gold. After a six-month break, data from the People’s Bank of China showed it purchased five tonnes of gold in November.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Agnico eyes O3 Mining’s Marbon deposit with $204-million cash offer
Agnico Eagle is looking to expand its mining footprint in the Abitibi region. The Kirkland Lake and Detour Lake gold miner is making a takeover bid for O3 mining, a neighbouring gold company on the Quebec side of the prolific Abitibi mineral belt.
Agnico announced Dec. 12 that it has entered into a definitive support agreement to acquire all of the outstanding common shares of O3 in an offer valued at $204 million. The proposed deal is built around the acquisition of O3 Mining’s main asset, its Marban Alliance property, located outside Val d’Or, that is next to Agnico Eagle’s Canadian Malartic mine complex.
Famine and ethnic cleansing stalk Sudan. Yet the gold trade is booming, enriching generals and propelling the fight.
The luxury jet touched down in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on a mission to collect hundreds of pounds of illicit gold. On board was a representative of a ruthless paramilitary group accused of ethnic cleansing in Sudan’s sprawling civil war, the flight manifest showed. The gold itself had been smuggled from Darfur, a region of famine and fear in Sudan that is largely under his group’s brutal control.
Porters grunted as they heaved cases filled with gold, about $25 million worth, onto the plane, said three people involved with or briefed on the deal. Airport officials discreetly maintained a perimeter around the jet, which stood out in the main airport of one of the world’s poorest countries.
(Kitco News) – While a likely U.S. recession in Q2 would impact industrial demand for silver, most of the gray metal’s recent strengths are expected to carry over into the new year, and the price of silver is projected to outperform gold in 2025, according to analysts at Heraeus Precious Metals.
In their Precious Forecast 2025, the analysts said that if market conditions unfold as expected, they believe silver will outgain gold once again in 2025. “This year, the silver price has seen the largest percentage gains across the precious metals (+26.82% to the end of November),” they noted.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/
Collapse of Mount Polley tailings dam considered one of the worst environmental disasters in Canadian history
More than a decade after spilling millions of litres of toxic wastewater into rivers in the B.C. Interior, Imperial Metals Corp. has been charged with 15 violations of the federal Fisheries Act.
The charges were announced Tuesday by the B.C. Conservation Officer Service, which said it worked with the Department of Fisheries and Environment and Climate Change Canada to build the case for taking the company to court.
The arrest of mining executives in Mali, threats by Burkina Faso’s junta to strip permits and the seizure of a French-run uranium site in Niger have unsettled Western miners operating in West Africa and could limit further investments. Day-to-day production in Mali and Burkina Faso has so far been largely unaffected.
The escalation is expected, however, to hit firms seeking finance and insurance – curbing supply growth in Africa’s engine of gold output, more than a dozen people, including mining employees, financiers, insurance providers and government sources, told Reuters.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Toronto gold company drilling off Grey Fox deposit with bump in resources expected in early 2025
While Glencore’s Kidd base metals mine is slated for closure in two years time, the legendary Timmins camp is far from finished when it comes gold mining longevity. McEwen Mining is excited by a new prospect in its gold mining stable at the Fox Complex, east of the city, that contains a new and emerging deposit dubbed Grey Fox.
In releasing a raft of high-grade assay results this week, the Toronto gold company framed the ongoing exploration program at Grey Fox as opening up “new possibilities for resource and production growth” in what is already a very prolific mining area for McEwen.
At present, gold is caught in a medium-term corrective cycle, while long-term price charts and macro fundamentals still firmly favor the safe-haven metal going higher once a now 6-week correction has run its course.
As mentioned in this column heading into the U.S. presidential election, gold had been long overdue for a 5-10% correction. The 54% 12-month surge in bullion into the end of October had yet to experience as much as a 5% correction heading into a chaotic U.S. election, with the overwhelming result having led to some healthy profit taking from an extreme overbought situation.
SSR Mining (NASDAQ, TSX: SSRM; ASX: SSR) announced on Friday it has acquired the Cripple Creek & Victor (CC&V) gold mine in Colorado from Newmont (NYSE: NEM, TSX: NGT). With this acquisition, SSR is expected to become the third-largest gold miner in the United States. The transaction includes a $100 million upfront cash payment and up to $175 million in milestone-based payments, for a total of $275 million.
Of the milestone payments, $87.5 million will be paid upon the approval of an amended permit for the CC&V Cresson mine filed by Newmont earlier this year to extend its life by adding leach pad capacity and making operational adjustments.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Authorities in Mali have issued an arrest warrant for Barrick Gold Corp. chief executive officer Mark Bristow in a fresh escalation of a tax dispute in the West African country, Malian journalists have reported.
Copies of the arrest warrant, posted by one of the journalists on social media Thursday, show that Mr. Bristow is being charged with money laundering and violating Mali’s financial regulations during the period from 2019 to 2023.
https://www.terracestandard.com/
The filing is the second petition in a week against the major gold-copper mine in B.C.’s “Golden Triangle”
A coalition of environmental groups has launched a legal challenge against the province’s Environmental Assessment Office (EAO), contending the proposed KSM mine in Northwest B.C. does not meet the criteria for a “substantial start.”
Ecojustice, representing SkeenaWild Conservation Trust and the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission (SEITC), filed the petition, arguing the mine’s environmental assessment is outdated and poses significant ecological and cultural risks.
JACAREACANGA, Brazil (Reuters) – The involvement of Indigenous people in illegal gold hunting, lured by the prospect of easy money due to record prices, has made Brazil’s task of cracking down on wildcat mining in the Amazon far harder, environmental agents and police say.
The Munduruku territory, a reservation the size of Switzerland on the Tapajos river, a major Amazon tributary, has become a hot spot for illegal mining, which Brazilian law bans on Indigenous land. But increasingly, Munduruku tribe members are entering the illegal trade that is backed by organized crime.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/
The Coté Gold Mine has plans to hire around 110 people in the next year
Joanne Sallay, a self-confessed “city dweller”, says she never put much thought into the mining industry until she was invited to visit IAMGOLD’s Coté Gold Mine, located between Sudbury and Timmins. Sallay is the president and CEO of Teachers on Call, a tutoring company based out of Toronto. She was part of a group of 20 educators that visited the mine.
Several groups, including the Ontario Mining Association, Mining Matters and the Canadian Ecology Centre organized the trip to promote mining as a career option for students.
(Kitco News) – With 100 tons in gold purchases in 2024, the central bank of Poland has become the number one sovereign buyer of the yellow metal. But the country is not alone, as the Russia-Ukraine war has forced the Czechs, Serbs, and Hungarians to also bolster their reserves.
While the focus for much of the year was on China’s massive central bank gold purchases – and then on their move to the sidelines as prices hit record highs – the nations of Eastern Europe have quietly emerged as the biggest buyers of the precious metal, and the biggest back stoppers of the gold rally.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
An Ontario court has dismissed a pair of civil suits against Barrick Gold Corp. that alleged it was responsible for human-rights abuses at a Tanzanian mine, with the judge ruling that any such court action should be tried in Tanzania.
The plaintiffs are a group of Indigenous Kurya from villages around the mine who were injured in 2021 and 2022 when the Tanzanian police force allegedly shot at them, as well as family members of victims who were killed during this period allegedly by the police.
